“David Ellefson was an honest-to-God founding member of the legendary thrash metal band Megadeth.”  Now he’s in a distance learning program at Concordia Seminary.

Congratulations to the makers of “Love Free or Die” for their Sundance successes.  The movie profiles openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson.

The Village Voice reports on the death of Ann Tidman, someone not on the general media’s list but a very important member of the Church of Scientology.

From the Tablet review of “Red Tails,” a new movie by George Lucas:

The main idea Lucas borrowed from Campbell was that of the monomyth, or the universal structure Campbell argued explained every hero humanity has ever adored, from Jesus Christ to Luke Skywalker. They all followed the same pattern: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

It sucks to be an Ethiopian Jew in Israel.

“RasTa:  A Soul’s Journey” is a new documentary  that follows Bob Marley’s daughter around the world as she discovers the reachers of this unique 20th century faith.

Charles Moore on Alain de Botton’s new book, A Non-Believer’s guide to the Uses of Religion:

So he offers a series of acute observations of various aspects of religion, often encapsulated in almost aphoristic sentences. Here are some: “Religion seems to know a great deal about loneliness”; “it is a sign of immaturity to object too strenuously [as atheists often do] to being treated like a child”; “The greatest Christian preachers have been vulgar in the very best sense”; “To sustain goodness, it helps to have an audience”; “Christianity has been guided by a simple yet essential observation that has nevertheless never made any impression upon those in charge of secular education: how very easily we forget things”; “It is telling that the secular world is not well versed in the art of gratitude.”

And The New Statesman’s Nelson Jones:

He is struck by the hollowness of much modern culture, the unwillingness of today’s education system, for example, to impart wisdom along with information. Secularism, he has said, “is full of holes. We have secularised badly.” Among his projects is a “Temple of Perspective“, a hollow a 46-metre high monolith in which pious non-believers will be able to contemplate the universe and the insignificant place they occupy within it. He wants to build it in the City of London, which to be fair probably could do with acquiring a sense of perspective.

Evil Little Thing:  A Rhode Island 16 year old sued to have a Christian prayer removed from her high school auditorium.  And she won.  Now she’s being made into a outcast in her small town.